Based on extensive interviews with informal importers and brokers in Cameroon, this paper explains why customs reform aimed at reducing fraud and corruption may be difficult to achieve. Informal traders and brokers (without licenses) follow various business models and practices, which are...

Considerations of risk and vulnerability are key to understanding the dynamics of poverty. This study conceives vulnerability as expected poverty and illustrates a methodology to empirically assess household vulnerability using pseudo panel data derived from repeated cross sections augmented...

This paper examines the ways in which lower-income households obtain basic financial services in urban communities in Mexico and the United States. And it discusses the efforts that private sector and government organizations are making to lower the cost or improve the quality of those services....

Statistics show that the sale of goods on credit is widespread among firms even when they are capital constrained and thus face relatively high costs in providing trade credit. This study provides an explanation for this by arguing that customers who possess strong market power are able to...

The author investigates whether contagion matters when emerging market firms cross-list their stocks in a developed capital market. She develops a rational expectations model where financial markets are segmented along emerging markets'borders and contagion spreads from one emerging market to...

The author surveys the literature on equity portfolio investment to develop a research agenda that could help developing countries interested in attracting equity portfolio flows. He finds that a broad literature exists on equity portfolio flows, but that most empirical tests have focused on...

The authors address the trading strategies of mutual funds in emerging markets. The data set they develop permits analyses of these strategies at the level of individual portfolios. A methodologically novel feature of their analysis: they disentangle the behavior of fund managers from that of...

In recent years, the role of investment funds has increased in most commodity markets. Investment funds, which traditionally deal with financial markets, have been shifting between financial markets and commodity futures markets, as well as among commodity futures markets. The popularity of...

This paper examines legal and regulatory measures that can be taken to promote access to the primary market in emerging market economies. While capital market development depends on many factors including, primarily, a favorable macroeconomic environment, an appropriately designed and effective...

In the chaotic financial environment of East Asia in 1997-98, daily changes in stock prices of as much as 10 percent became commonplace. The authors analyze what type of news moved the market in those days of extreme market jitters. They find that movements are triggered by both local and...